91–100 of 127 posts
I get the maybes and the caveats, the misleading title but the direction seems clear - solar efficiency is a tractable materials science problem - and "we" should see this as a penicillin moment - invest hugely into the research and development until we find the right processes and approach to make cheap ubiquitous solar. Manhattan project levels of finding is what I mean - because the pay off is humans cutting their…
On topic of the HN title, there is research being done into carbon nanotube rectennas. Theoretical efficiency is in the upper 90's%. Problem is that they have very narrow bandwidth. Also as far as I'm aware, no one has even built lab samples that do decently.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're confused – heat isn't being converted into anything. The article conflates the words "heat" and "infrared radiation", which are not at all the same thing. As a rule, everything around you glows – in other words, it emits photons. Some infrared ones, some visible ones, some ultraviolet (or even higher-frequency) ones. How much of each depends on the temperature of the material. Most things (e.g. you) are too co…
This heats up the nanotubes, which then emit visible photons, which then increase electricity generation Once a solar cell is built with this technology, do you think there will be enough light emitted by the nanotubes to make the solar panels appear to glow, themselves? Because that would be pretty interesting.
So, from a pragmatic perspective, I would say that no, they wouldn't glow - proper engineering would ensure these particles are collected.
This sounds great, but for some years we hear of various discoveries that will greatly increase solar panel efficiency. Why are we still at 22%-ish?
Meanwhile silicon and CdTe solar cells continue to decrease in price and increase in efficiency year after year. At this point the current technology is cheap enough to be profitably used to supply power in many regions of the world. Any one who says we need a break through in solar to make it economic is wrong. At this point the solar panels themselves are less than half the cost of a solar installation.
Nearly all press releases talking about efficiencies over 50% are just talking about unpractical theoretical limits that would require cooling the solar cells to freezing temperatures or other schemes (i.e. talking about the carnot limit instead of the shockleyy-quiesser limit).
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And you can use them to power your watch perfectly fine too. That doesn't mean it will work at scale for society which is the primary issue. The key thing to look for is energy density as that will be more likely to give society a bang for the buck. Distributing solar cells out with the capacity factor of solar isn't economically feasible for society and neither possible as a main source of energy. Nuclear and Hydro…
Why is it not feasible? I run 32 panels on my roof, in the pacific northwest which is known for its rain, it covers 100% of my residential and electric car usage when considered on an annual basis. If roofs required solar panels we would have a large part of power generation done at a much lower intallation cost and could focus on large scale energy storage projects instead. My payoff period is 11-12 years, system is…
Aren't you still connected to the traditional grid anyway?
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Sorry for a potentially stupid question: why do they need to convert heat into visible light? Why can't we convert heat directly into electricity at the same time as we convert visible light into electricity?
You're confused – heat isn't being converted into anything. The article conflates the words "heat" and "infrared radiation", which are not at all the same thing. As a rule, everything around you glows – in other words, it emits photons. Some infrared ones, some visible ones, some ultraviolet (or even higher-frequency) ones. How much of each depends on the temperature of the material. Most things (e.g. you) are too co…
I get the maybes and the caveats, the misleading title but the direction seems clear - solar efficiency is a tractable materials science problem - and "we" should see this as a penicillin moment - invest hugely into the research and development until we find the right processes and approach to make cheap ubiquitous solar. Manhattan project levels of finding is what I mean - because the pay off is humans cutting their…
The penicillin moment happened because penicillin actually came into existence and became widely available pretty rapidly. Research and speculation is awesome stuff, but the hard part isn't discovering new concepts. It is actually making those concepts into a marketable and affordable good. The evidence for this is that even though there is essentially a new 'breakthrough' discovery every other week for solar panels,…
If this is the case, then wouldn't "buy a bunch of patents and (with great fanfare) make them open-source" be a relatively low-complexity way for a billionaire who feels like making a name for himself to accelerate progress on fighting climate change?
I get the maybes and the caveats, the misleading title but the direction seems clear - solar efficiency is a tractable materials science problem - and "we" should see this as a penicillin moment - invest hugely into the research and development until we find the right processes and approach to make cheap ubiquitous solar. Manhattan project levels of finding is what I mean - because the pay off is humans cutting their…
The penicillin moment happened because penicillin actually came into existence and became widely available pretty rapidly. Research and speculation is awesome stuff, but the hard part isn't discovering new concepts. It is actually making those concepts into a marketable and affordable good. The evidence for this is that even though there is essentially a new 'breakthrough' discovery every other week for solar panels,…
Having made that first breakthrough, world class teams across the globe fought to bring the efficiency up from "froth on the top of a brew" to "gallons of the stuff"
Florey was a big part of the story but so were teams in US and Europe and then the US military scaled it up beyond belief.
We spent money, targeted money, on the best teams globally and then put serious industrial might to it once they found the answers.
That exact approach is what I am calling for again.
And as for patents - if enough global effort is put in, with enough government funds, the pressure to put the results "in public hands" rather than hold out for patents is really strong
The title is misleading. The full title is: > Researchers at Rice University developed a method to convert heat into light that could boost solar efficiency from 22% to 80% The conditional tense signals that the researchers didn't actually do so, but that the study might enable it. The article re-iterates that this is speculation: > The implications of their discovery are significant. Research from Chloe Doiron, a Ri…
Maybe speculation should not be presented as a statement of fact in the title.